Annabeth Gish

Recently we had the opportunity to sit down with renowned actress Annabeth Gish (The X-Files, Brotherhood) to discuss her role in A&E’s upcoming event Bag of Bones, a four-hour miniseries based on Stephen King’s iconic bestselling supernatural thriller which premieres on A&E Network Sunday, December 11th and concludes on Monday, December 12th.

Aaron MK: The original Stephen King novel Bag of Bones won the Bram Stoker award for best novel in 1998, and has since gone on to record sales, how much pressure was the crew under to do the source material justice?

Annabeth Gish: I don’t think it was really the crew’s responsibility for that, I think it was more Mick [Garris] and the writing team who felt that pressure. But the script was so tight once we went to production, that [it was the crew’s goal] to be faithful to what we saw on the script pages. There are some differences between the novel and the miniseries, but that was certainly due to the economy of bringing such a large production to the screen.

Aaron MK: Over the years, there have been many Stephen King stories put to film, what do you think makes Mr. king’s stories so translatable to the film genre?

Annabeth Gish: Hrm… Because he always puts character at the heart of his horror. I think there is always a real human struggle within these extravagant, horrific circumstances and it’s really just reality stretched to its most dramatic state, I think. What I think Stephen King does so masterfully is [portraying] the human element- and love! He’s really the expert at writing about love, which is probably why all of his horror is so… good! *laugh*

Aaron MK: Over your career you’ve spanned several genres, westerns to sci-fi, comedy to drama. How do you handle the transition from such wildly different genres one project to the next?

Annabeth Gish: That’s a good question, but I don’t think it’s possible to answer for me because, as an actor, you just play the truth. Whomever you’re playing and whatever circumstances that they’re in, whether it be in a horror story or on a spaceship, that’s their truth and as long as you’re being honest and authentic then you can cross any genre.